Temple I at Tikal (in modern-day Guatemala), one of the most powerful cities of the Classic Maya period (250-900). It was a funerary temple in honor of King Jasaw Chan K’asill I.

The gang that couldn't shoot straight

February 4, 2020

The Iowa Caucuses debacle has had posters straining for sporting metaphors. The Democrats in disarray are down 10-1 to President Donald J. Trump and the Republicans in the first inning, some say. The Dems are the San Francisco 49ers down to the Kansas City Chiefs in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, which has a nice Blue State-Red State ring to it since the Niners play in California and the Chiefs in Kan, er, Missouri. (Just thought everyone needed a musical break with the great band Kansas’ surprisingly fitting “Carry On Wayward Son.”)

I, however, have a more apt sports analogy. The Iowa Caucuses are like the figure skater billed as the next Peggy Fleming who after four years of Winter Olympics prep falls on the first jump in the short program.

I think that sums things up perfectly — the Iowa Caucuses, a triple toe loop away from unmitigated disaster.

Brexit Day, Jan. 31, in Kinsbury, England. Photograph by David Howard.

A world lit by fire

February 4, 2020

The wildfires in Australia are a poignant metaphor for our time — a world out of control, untold collateral damage.

The Iowa Caucuses are in meltdown due to “inconsistencies in reporting data,” whatever that means. Results are due later today, Feb. 4. (Gee, they missed Groundhog Day just by two days. It would’ve been so appropriate.) Remember when we had voting machines that worked?

Meanwhile, President Donald J. “Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City (Kansas)” Trump will be acquitted in his witness-less impeachment trial. The Republicans say they voted against witnesses for the good of the country, which would be torn apart if Trump’s presidency were declared illegitimate. There’s nothing that lends an air of ease to a non-choice quite like one whose expediency is couched in faux nobility.

Sudden death on D.C.'s power courts

October 24, 2019

A president in thrall to a foreign power. A disenchanted first lady. A White House moving toward crisis.

No, not that White House. But sometimes life imitates art, as it does in Georgette Gouveia’s new psychological thriller, “Burying the Dead” (JMS Books, Oct. 30). It’s a high stakes game of love and death, set on the power courts of Washington, D.C. and other glittering world capitals, that represents a departure for Gouveia, whose previous novels were in the trending category of male/male romance.

My novel “The Penalty for Holding” will be reissued by JMS Books Sept. 25.

A new chapter in 'The Games Men Play' series

September 11, 2019

They say when one door shuts another opens. Over the summer, I was saddened to hear that Less Than Three Press, the publisher of my football novel “The Penalty for Holding,” had folded and, for a while, I thought that was the end of the book’s publishing life. So you can imagine my joy that the work – about a gay, biracial quarterback’s search for identity in the NFL – will be reissued by JMS Books Sept. 25. And you can imagine my further delight in hearing that JMS has agreed to publish my new psychological thriller “Burying the Dead” – about a rising Russian tennis star whose career masks his real “day job,” political assassin – Oct. 30.

For more…

Irina Belotelkin’s oil portrait of Mikhail Baryshnikov, one of the greatest male dancers of the last half a century.

Faux pas de deux -- Lara Spencer's cultural ignorance

August 28, 2019

The contretemps over “Good Morning America” co-anchor Lara Spencer mocking Prince George for taking ballet lessons is both a tempest in a teapot and the latest salvo in the culture wars that began with the demonization of Western civilization in the 1960s by liberals who could not separate it from its imperialistic, colonial roots and continued with the demonization of the arts in the 1970s and ’80s by conservatives who decried the arts falsely as a louche tax drain.

“We’ll see how long that lasts,” Spencer retorted to the news that the young prince is taking ballet lessons, with his father Prince William’s enthusiastic approval. It was the flippant, stupid remark of someone with no cultural background (remember her short-lived stint on PBS’ “Antiques Roadshow”?) trying to be witty or at least cool, and it was met with swift condemnation, a swift apology and a redemptive moment played out against the backdrop of 300 male dancers in Manhattan’s Times Square.

And that would be the end of it, except that, as one person put it, you can’t unring a bell, particularly in a divisive time in which every statement seems to be a clarion call to partisanship. Perhaps that’s unfair. We all make mistakes. We’re all more than our worst days. Yet Spencer’s ridicule cannot be undone, particularly for those who have been mercilessly bullied or marginalized for their love of the arts.

End of a quarterback, birth of an icon, as captured by AP.

The endgame of Colin Kaepernick

February 17, 2019

Colin Kaepernick’s collusion case against the NFL is now one for the record books, though no numbers have been reported. Such is the way with private settlements. My uncle said he probably got $40 million. I think he got at least twice that. The NFL isn’t merely buying his silence in a suit that he may well have won. They’re saying adios to an activist player.

Colin Kaepernick (number 7) is set to throw a pass in Super Bowl XLVIII on Feb. 3, 2013.

No easy way out

February 2, 2019

“New England Patriots legend Tom Brady will be playing in his record ninth Super Bowl on Sunday, while the Los Angeles Rams’ 24-year-old signal-caller, Jared Goff, will be playing in his first. But no quarterback looms over the NFL like one who has not set foot on an NFL field since the 2016 season — former San Francisco 49er Colin Kaepernick,” Michael A. Fletcher writes on The Undefeated.